Sacred and Secular in Medieval and Early Modern Cultures - New Essays

This book illuminates the pervasive interplay of 'sacred' and 'secular' phenomena in the literature, history, politics, and religion of the Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. Following an introduction that examines methodological questions in the study of the sacred and the secular, the other essays treat (among other topics): Old English poetry, troubadour lyrics, twelfth-century romance, the Gregorian Reform, Middle English lyrics and the work of the Pearl-poet, Luther, and Shakespeare. The essays gathered here constitute a new way of applying a classic dichotomy to major cultural phenomena of the pre-modern era.